“What are you—?” Priscilla began.
As we closed in on the horse, I raised my knife.
“No!” she shrieked, both hands clutching me, fingers digging into my sides.
I slashed the knife and caught the other horse in the flank. He let out a scream. Then he bolted. Seeing their prize escaping, six of the Outsiders tore after it. The oldest one shouted and snarled and waved, as if trying to call some back, but none listened.
I gave my horse full rein then, and she galloped back the way we’d come. An arrow whizzed past. A second caught the folds of my shirt. But they didn’t dare risk hurting the horse—or wasting arrows—so after two shots, they settled for chasing us, howling and raging as they fell ever farther behind. Twice, the horse stumbled on the rocky ground. Once, I thought she was going down, but I managed to rein her in, slowing her enough to get her footing and keep it, and we continued on through the rocky divide.
When we reached the other side, I took us a little distance out onto the plain, then stopped my horse and slid off.
“You don’t need to do that,” Priscilla said. “We can both ride.”
I certainly was not walking so that she could ride. I resisted the urge to snap that and said, “You need to get off, too, before the horse keels over from exhaustion.”
“O-out here?” She looked around. “It’s not safe.”
“That looks like a sheltered spot over there,” I said, pointing to a pile of stone, oddly out of place in the empty plain.
It was the next stop on the mental map Braeden had given me. He’d called it something I hadn’t quite understood—an Outsider term. As I drew closer, I realized it was a pile of ruins. The remains of a building from the Old World. There weren’t many of them left—they’d been scavenged decades ago. But this one was a twisted mass of man-made rock and metal rods that looked as if it had been fused together in a giant oven.
“Wh-what is it?” Priscilla asked as we drew closer.
“A building from the Old World,” I said. “Destroyed by some kind of bomb, I think.”
“Bomb?” She said the unfamiliar word like I must have repeated Braeden’s Outsider term. If you hadn’t read every book in the fortress’s collection a few times, there were a lot of words you wouldn’t know—ones that had dropped from our vocabulary because we had no use for them. Even I wasn’t sure exactly what a bomb was or whether one had done this.
I crawled through what must have been a doorway. Inside, it was hushed and cool. I picked my way through the rubble until I saw Braeden’s message: “Soon.” I wiped it away quickly, but there was no rush—Priscilla was still outside.
“Get in here,” I said. “We need to rest, and this is safer than any pile of rock. We can stay here for a while.”
She finally came in. She didn’t look around, just walked straight into the main room, stretched out gingerly on the ground, and laid her head on her arm. As she rested, I continued poking about.
When I first heard the growl, I was near the back wall, in a separate room. I wheeled, ready to race back to Priscilla, but the rational part of my brain said it was only the wind whistling past. A real growl meant hybrids, and if one got anywhere near the ruins, the horse would have let us know. But when the growl came again, closely followed by Priscilla’s shriek, I stumbled back to her so fast I reached the main room only to trip on the rubble and fall face-first, barely catching myself as I hit the ground.
As I lifted my head, Priscilla raced over to help me.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I think it’s Braeden.”
I looked up to see a massive black wolf in the doorway. Saliva dripped from its open mouth. Blue eyes held mine. Human blue eyes, one of them filmed over, as if blind.
“It’s a werewolf,” I whispered. “But it isn’t Braeden.”
“How would you know?”
I didn’t answer. I’d seen Braeden in wolf form. His dark eyes stayed the same and his fur matched his hair —medium brown. This wolf was almost black, with grizzled gray around his mouth. Older. Bigger, too. A lot bigger.
“Don’t break eye contact,” I whispered. “We’re going to back up—”
“To where?” Panic edged into her voice.
I reached out and gripped her arm, my gaze still holding the wolf’s. “We’ll find another way out.”
There wasn’t one. Not that I had seen. But she nodded and rose to her feet.
“Don’t break eye—” I started.
The wolf growled, the sound reverberating through the hushed room, and Priscilla leaped up to run. The wolf lunged. I dived out of the way. Priscilla flew into the wall, as if the wolf had hit her, but he was still running. I looked up to see a man in the doorway, his hands lifted, fingers sparking.
A woman appeared behind the man, pushing past as the wolf brought Priscilla down. I started to run to Priscilla, but the first man hit me with magic, knocking me off my feet. I saw Priscilla twisting under the wolf as she tried to fight it off. The woman said something—words I didn’t understand—and Priscilla stopped. Just froze.
Something hit my side. I caught a flash of fur, felt claws scrape my leg. I tried to rise, tried to drag myself away, but a second wolf had me. Still I fought. Then fangs clamped down on the back of my neck, pinning me to the ground, and I stopped struggling.
“The Branded,” Priscilla whispered. “We’re dead now. Worse than dead.”
She moaned and huddled on the dirt floor of the hut. Our attackers had brought us there, thrown us in, and left us. It felt like half a day had passed, just sitting there in the dark, waiting, listening to Priscilla.
When the door flap opened, the sudden blast of sunlight was so strong it blinded me. I felt fingers grip my forearms. Someone yanked me to my feet. Priscilla screamed at them to leave us alone, that she was a Second’s daughter, and her father would hunt them to the ends of the earth if she was harmed.
The man who held me only laughed and kicked at her when she tried to attack. Then he dragged me out, stumbling, into the bright midday sun. As he led me, I blinked hard and looked around. I’d been blindfolded when they brought us in. Now I saw that we were in a camp filled with leather tents. People milled about, mostly men, a few women, no children or elders. A raiding party. Some looked over at me as I passed. Most continued with their tasks—sharpening weapons, cooking food, tending to the small herd of horses tied nearby, my own mount now among them.
My captor said nothing, just led me along, one hand on my arm. When we reached another tent, he opened the flap and prodded me inside.
Again, I was blinded, this time by the sudden dark, and I stumbled. Fingers gripped my arms and steadied me. They pulled me inside, and the door flap closed. Then arms went around me, lips coming to mine in a deep kiss.
“You did it,” Braeden whispered when he pulled back.
I blinked. There was a small lantern blazing, and after a moment, I could see him in the dim light. His cheek was cut, healing now, along with a blackened eye. I hugged him, tight and fierce, and when he stiffened a little, I remembered his back, whipped and branded. I tried to pull away, whispering an apology, but he hugged me again.
“You really did it,” he whispered.
I looked up at him. “We did it.”
A smile. A kiss. Then he led me to a blanket, where dried meat and water waited. I took the water first, gulping it.
“You weren’t hurt?” he said.
I shook my head.
“You knew it was me, didn’t you?” he said. “The wolf that took you down? I thought you would, but then I wasn’t sure you did.”
“I knew,” I said. “I’m just a good performer.” Another gulp of water. “So it worked? The Branded took you in?”
“I had to fight a few rounds to prove my worth, but they can always use werewolves, and young and healthy
